Persian rice with tahdig is perfect for a lazy day

Before I get started on today’s topic, I want to put in a plug for Detroit Soup, which I wrote about in June (one of the earliest Feed the Spirit columns). As you can see from this article in Deadline Detroit, they may have to close due to a lack of funding. If you’d like to donate, go to http://www.detroitsoup.com/donate. It would be a shame if this creative community support program were to disappear. And now for something completely different…

My husband’s cousin married a woman who emigrated to England from Persia as a young woman—the emigres never called it Iran.

One day shortly before we moved from England to America, they invited us for a meal. Freda served the most incredible rice dish. Every grain was separate and perfectly cooked, but mixed in with the fluffy rice were bits of really crunchy, golden brown potato.

“Wow, how do you make this?” I asked her.

“Oh it’s easy,” she said. “You cook the rice part way and take it out of the pan. Then you heat up some oil, put in sliced potatoes, put the rice on top of the potatoes and let the rice steam to finish cooking while the potatoes cook.”

I couldn’t wait to try it. But when I did, what I got was a gummy mess.

She forgot a few details!

Freda had forgotten to tell me a few important details:

  • You have to use basmati rice, or at least extra-long grain rice.
  • You have to rinse the rice to get rid of the starch and then soak it.
  • You have to cook the potatoes on one side and flip them over before steaming the rice.
  • When you steam the rice, you have to line the pot lid with a kitchen towel to absorb the moisture.

It would be 40 years before I tried to make Persian-style rice again. When I got a copy of The New Persian Kitchen by Louisa Shafia, it was one of the first recipes I wanted to try.

I was only slightly intimidated by the basic recipe for tahdig. (Pronounced “tah DEEG,” it’s the name of the crispy layer as well as the whole dish.) The recipe takes a page and a half in the book! That’s for the plain rice version–adding potato adds another few paragraphs of instructions.

Read the recipe repeatedly

I read the directions about a dozen times until I felt comfortable trying to make it. And I watched a couple of videos online; this one was helpful, although each video had a slightly different method, and none matched my cookbook exactly. One soaked the rice for two hours, one didn’t soak it at all. Some added oil to the water before parboiling the rice; some added water to the oil before making the tahdig layer. Some added turmeric or saffron to give the rice some added flavor and a nice yellow color.

After I made it a few times, I felt I could do it even without a recipe, the same way I make plain white or brown rice. Well, I could if I made it more frequently. The last time was long enough in the past that when I do it again I’ll at least read the recipe carefully before starting.

The basic steps are these:

  • Rinse the rice several times.
  • Soak the rice for at least 30 minutes, up to a few hours.
  • Parcook the rice for about 5 or 6 minutes, then drain.
  • Make the tahdig layer using some of the rice and optional lavash or potato.
  • Mound the rest of the rice on top of the tahdig layer and steam it.
  • Invert the pot over a serving plate, or scoop out the steamed rice and then remove the tahdig layer, which you can serve whole or broken into little pieces.

This recipe makes a lot – about double the amount of rice I usually make.  The first time I made it, we gorged ourselves and reheated it the next night, which was less than ideal. The second time, I was confident enough to serve it for company — and it got rave reviews.

I don’t have a large, deep skillet or a paella pan so I used a Dutch oven. If you halve the recipe, you can probably use a large saucepan.

Many variations on the theme

There are lots of variations to the basic tahdig. You can put a layer of lavash bread at the bottom of the pan the same way you would potatoes. Cut the lavash to fit the pan, or make pie-shaped wedges of smaller breads so they’ll cover the whole pan in a single layer. You can probably use a tortilla just as well.

You can add a few tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt to the rice you use in the tahdig layer, or you can mix in a whisked-till-foamy egg white; both the yogurt and the egg white will keep the tahdig layer from falling apart, but neither is essential.

If you have a free afternoon and want to be adventurous, give this intriguing rice dish a try!